Current Interest

Description: Tyson has been blessed to grace the stage and screen for six decades. She has been the church girl who once rarely spoke a word; the teenager who sought solace in the verses of the old hymn for which this book is named. A daughter and mother, a sister, and a friend, she is also an observer of human nature and the dreamer of audacious dreams. Here, in her ninth decade, Tyson is a woman who has something meaningful to say. -- adapted from jacket

Description: Adam Grant examines the critical art of rethinking: learning to question your beliefs and to know what you don't know, which can position you for success at work and happiness at home. Our ways of thinking become habits that we don't bother to question, and mental laziness leads us to prefer the ease of old routines to the difficulty of new ones. We fail to update the beliefs we formed in the past for the challenges we face in the present. But in a rapidly changing world, we need to spend as much time rethinking as we do thinking. This book is about the benefit of doubt, and about how we can get better at embracing the unknown and the joy of being wrong. Evidence has shown that creative geniuses are not attached to one identity but constantly willing to rethink their stances, that leaders who admit they don't know something and seek critical feedback lead more productive and innovative teams, and that our greatest presidents have been open to updating their views. As a mindset and a skillset, rethinking can be taught, and Grant explains how to develop the necessary qualities.It's intellectual humility that makes it possible for us to stop denying our weaknesses so that we can start improving ourselves.-- From statement provided by publisher.

Description: Drawing on his journals and diaries from the last 40 years, this book presents a uniquely McConaughey approach to achieving success and satisfaction.-- From statement provided by publisher.

Description: The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power--which groups have it and which do not. Isabel Wilkerson gives us a portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through a deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people--including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others--she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. She points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. This is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of America life today.-- From statement provided by publisher.

Description: Suleika Jaouad describes the harrowing years she spent in early adulthood fighting leukemia and how she learned to live again while forging connections with other survivors of profound illness and suffering.

Description: The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it -- and then dismantle it. Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America, pointing us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it. He weaves ethics, history, law, and science together with a personal narrative of his own awakening to antiracism.

Description: There is nothing more essential to our health and wellbeing than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat 25,000 times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong with our breathing and how to fix it. Modern research is showing us that changing the ways in which we breathe can jump-start athletic performance, halt snoring, rejuvenate internal organs, mute allergies and asthma, blunt autoimmune disease, and straighten scoliotic spines. Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.-- From statement provided by publisher.

Description: George Saunders guides the reader through seven classic Russian short stories he's been teaching for twenty years as a professor. Paired with stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, these essays are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. Saunders approaches each of these stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing is as much a craft as it is a quality of openness and a willingness to see the world through new eyes. This book ultimately shows how great fiction can change a person's life and become a benchmark of one's moral and ethical beliefs.-- From statement provided by publisher.

Description: Americans have disabled the government's ability to solve even basic problems, making us vulnerable to the most dangerous demagogue ever to pretend to the White House. Kurt Andersen shows how the masterminds of the economic right rode an unprecedented wave of nostalgia by dressing up their harsh new rich-get-richer system in patriotic old-time drag, making it their mission to take over the government for their purposes alone and convincing the country that the mid-century consensus about the function of the American government was all wrong. Andersen has the ability to see complex systems with clarity, making this book both intellectually formidable and completely entertaining. In his diagnosis of what happened and what it means for us today, Andersen spares no one, committing to a pinpointing of his own boomer generation as accessories to the great dismantling of the American experiment.

Description: "A tongue-in-cheek advice book from one of the most famous funemployed millennials in Manhattan and founder of the Instagram account Girl With No Job"-- Provided by publisher.

Description: A meditation on the hidden, sometimes difficult topics we must consider to live an authentic life. We aren't born into a self. It is created without our consent, built on top of our circumstances, the off-handed comments we hear from others, and the moments that scared us most when we were young. But in the busyness of our daily life, we rarely get the chance to think clearly about the questions that matter most. Who am I? Where do I belong? How much of who I am and what I do boils down to avoiding the things that make me feel small? We tuck these questions into the corner of our minds, but they drive our behavior far more than we give them credit for, even after we become adults. Jedidiah Jenkins makes space to explore the seven topics we must think about in order to live a deeply considered life: ego, family, work, love, nature, death, and the soul. He considers the experiences that shape us into who we are, whether they're heart-pounding or ordinary. Jenkins leads readers on a wide-ranging conversation about finding fulfillment in the people and places around us, and discovering the courage to show our deepest selves to the world.-- From statement provided by publisher.

Description: James Comey, former FBI Director, uses his long career in federal law enforcement to explore issues of justice and fairness in the US justice system. Comey might best be known as the FBI director that Donald Trump fired in 2017, but he's had a long, varied career in the law and justice system. He knows better than most just what a force for good the US justice system can be, and how far afield it has strayed during the Trump Presidency. Comey uses anecdotes and lessons from his career to show how the federal justice system works. From prosecuting mobsters as an Assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York in the 1980s to grappling with the legalities of anti-terrorism work as the Deputy Attorney General in the early 2000s to his tumultuous stint as FBI director beginning in 2013, Comey shows just how essential it is to pursue the primacy of truth for federal law enforcement.

Description: As violence against Black people--both physical and psychological--seemed only to increase in recent years, culminating in the historic pandemic and protests of the summer of 2020, Charles Blow felt compelled to write this new story for Black Americans. He envisioned a succinct, counterintuitive, and impassioned corrective to the myths that have for too long governed our thinking about race and geography in America. Drawing on both political observations and personal experience as a Black son of the South, Charles set out to offer a call to action by which Black people can finally achieve equality, on their own terms.--adapted from book jacket.

Description: Erik Larson delivers a fresh and compelling portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz. On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold the country together and persuade President Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally--and willing to fight to the end. Larson shows how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." He provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their daughter, Mary, their son, Randolph, and his wife, Pamela; Pamela's illicit lover, and the cadre of close advisers who comprised Churchill's "Secret Circle." In the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill's eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.-- From statement provided by publisher.

Description: A memoir of love and loss, of being in the right place at the right time, and of the mysterious ways a beloved pet can bring people together. There's a special camaraderie among early-morning dog walkers. Gathering at dog runs in the park, or strolling through the farmer's market before the bustling crowd appears, fellow pet owners become familiar--as do the personalities of their beloved animals. In this special space and time, a chance encounter with an old acquaintance changed Martha Teichner's world. As fate would have it, her friend knew someone who was dying of cancer, from exposure to toxins after 9/11, and desperate to find a home for her dog, Harry. He was a Bull Terrier--the same breed as Martha's dear Minnie. Would Martha consider giving Harry a safe, loving new home? After Martha agrees to meet Harry and his owner Carol, what begins as a transaction involving a dog becomes a deep and meaningful friendship between two women with complicated lives and a love of Bull Terriers in common. Through the heartbreak and grief of Carol's illness, the bond that develops changed Martha's life, Carol's life, Minnie's life, Harry's life. As it changed Carol's death as well. Martha considers the ways our stories are shaped by the people we meet, and the profound love we can find by opening our hearts to unexpected encounters.-- From statement provided by publisher.

Description: Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil offers a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us.-- From statement provided by publisher.